Description
Book SynopsisThe Oxford Book of English Short Stories , edited by A. S. Byatt, herself the author of several collections of short stories, is the first anthology to specifically take the English short story as its theme. The 37 stories featured here are selected from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ranging from Dickens, Trollope, and Hardy to J. G. Ballard, Angela Carter, and Ian McEwan, though many draw ingeniously from the richness of earlier English literary writing.There are all sorts of threads of connection and contrast running through these stories. Their subjects vary from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the momentous to the trivial, from the grim to the farcical. There is English empiricism, English pragmatism, English starkness, English humour, English satire, English dandyism, English horror, and English whimsy. There are examples of social realism, from rural poverty to blitzed London; ghost stories and tales of the supernatural; surreal fantasy and science fiction. There ar
Table of ContentsIntroduction ; The Sacristan of St Botolph ; The Haunted House ; Relics of General Chasse, A Tale of Antwerp ; A Mere Interlude ; Little Brother ; Two Doctors ; Behind the Shade ; Wireless ; Under the Knife ; A White Night ; The Toys of Peace ; The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown ; Some Talk of Alexander ; The Reverent Wooing of Archibald ; Solid Objects ; The Man who Loved Islands ; A Tragedy in Green ; A Widow's Quilt ; Nuns at Luncheon ; Landlord of the Crystal Fountain ; On the Edge of the Cliff ; A Dream of Winter ; An Englishman's Home ; The Destructors ; The Waterfall ; The Troll ; The Blush ; At Hiruharama ; My Flannel Knickers ; Enoch's Two Letters ; Dream Cargoes ; Telephone ; My Story ; The Kiss ; The Beauty of the Dawn Shift ; Solid Geometry ; Dead Languages
